


Rugs, Not Drugs

by Zerubel



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Fluff and Humor, M/M, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-27 16:54:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20049391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zerubel/pseuds/Zerubel
Summary: Leorio is a considerate, thoughtful boyfriend; Kurapika will be sure to appreciate it when he's no longer spitting rug fibers.





	Rugs, Not Drugs

**Author's Note:**

> *Shows up late to the fandom with coffee, a Hisoka plushie, and lots of notes*
> 
> My first fic in a long time! With much gratitude to Hyena, who encouraged me to read HxH and then helped this little oneshot bloom. You are a delight!

Leorio was a quick study when it came to Kurta clan traditions – anything Kurapika told him, any legends or old artworks he could find, he absorbed it all like a sponge.

It was very touching, Kurapika thought privately, to have such an eager to learn boyfriend. Or at least it was, until it came to this.

It had started with small things – a talisman, a patch on clothes, a new border on a pair of pants that had needed the hems repaired. All stitched in Kurta clan patterns, all meaning various things. Leorio’s skills with a needle were understandable once you remembered Leorio’s medical training probably included stitching wounds and surgery. But that wasn’t what bothered Kurapika.

It was the patterns themselves. Specifically, their meaning. Over time, they morphed from espousing virtues such as “Strength” and “Tenacity”, fine sentiments for someone focused on a mission like his, to “Healing” and “Safety”. Leorio’s discovery of his strict (or some would say, suicidal) contract with his Nen lent his work a new sense of urgency. The patterns grew larger, grander, small single-stitch spirals growing into larger bands embroidered in finer materials.

The garments themselves developed into bandages, shirts, light padded overcoats that would perhaps help staunch a wound or soften a blow even a little. Tunics with reinforced chests, shoulders, etc. Throw blankets and pillows tucked around him when he was forced to take a nap. 

(“You are veeeery sleeeeeppyyy,” Leorio drawled while waving around a throw pillow decorated with Pleasant Dreams arranged over and over in concentric circles. He’d laughed and bopped the pillow to hit its wielder in the face.)

He once came home from an impromptu outing with Melody to discover new tapestries hanging in his room and a new comforter on his bed. He gently chastised Melody for going along with Leorio’s scheme, but kept the new decorations. His home had more Kurta-inspired finery than even a clan heir could have hoped for, all evidence that someone cared for and remembered his traditions.

It was after he made a new (“brutal”, asserted Leorio) contract with his Nen that Leorio ambushed him with a straitjacket liberally stitched with a message of “Stillness”, “Peace”, “Calm” and “Healing” in more variations than he’d ever seen any one person, clan healer included, wear. The thing practically radiated Nen, evidence of just how much  _ feeling _ Leorio had put into that project. 

Kurapika narrowly escaped being forced into it, but lost a shoe in the process of leaping away from Leorio and out a window. Afterwards, he switched to wearing suits, citing his leadership of the Nostrade family as the reason. 

He tried to ignore the burning light of challenge in Leorio’s eyes, and turned his focus towards his mission. Aside from an increase in embroidered silk handkerchiefs tucked into his suit pockets and socks with patterned heels and toes, things seemed to calm down.

He should have known Leorio not asking Gon and Killua to help was a fluke.

His eyebrow twitched as he wriggled furiously from his new position on the floor, rolled up in a rug that was blazing with Kurta swirls and Leorio’s Nen. Gon had distracted him, Killua had  _ tripped him _ , and Leorio had pounced, bundling him up in the rug and sitting on him to keep him in place. He couldn’t even twitch his fingers.

“So you see kids, this one here,” Leorio traced a pattern over where Kurapika’s head would be, “means Strong Foundation, or Sturdy, and this one next to it means Rest-“

“I’m not complaining, but why a rug,” Killua observed, smile twitching on his lips. Kurapika isn’t imagining it, he can hear Killua’s soft huffs of laughter. He’s trying to hide it while he enjoys Gon’s confused expression. 

“It ties the room together, don’t you think?”  _ And ties up the boyfriend, _ but Leorio isn’t going to say that out loud.

“Well, rugs were a pretty popular gift on the island,” Gon mused, looking upwards. “Usually you’d gift them to someone setting up a household. Sometimes sailors would send them back as gifts for their betrothed.”

Leorio coughed and waved his hands back and forth, distracting Gon from further vocalizing that line of thought. “It’s for  _ medical reasons. _ ”

Killua quirked an eyebrow, watching the wiggling intensify until it looked like Leorio was going for first place in an inchworm rodeo. “Medical. Ooookaaaay,” he drawled.

“Yes! It’s a serious condition, I’ll have you know. Kurapika suffers from what we in medicine call “ _ little bitch syndrome. _ ”

“I can HEAR YOU, you know!!” comes a muffled angry roar from inside the rug. It’s a little hard to hear over the sound of Killua losing his shit, laughing as he rolls on the floor. 

“Yes I do!” is the cheerful reply, as Leorio pats the rug over Kurapika’s rump with a  _ bit _ more enthusiasm than was probably necessary, Gon thinks.

Maybe someday he’ll tell them he’s known they’ve been dating the whole time.

  
  



End file.
